Unlike most monographs on Spanish phonology and morphology that approach
these topics from a structuralist or generativist framework, this volume is
written from a less traditional point of view. More specifically, it
emphasizes quantitative evidence from sources such as usage-based studies,
psycholinguistic experiments, corpus data, and computer simulations.
Arguments are presented to demonstrate that these kinds of evidence are
crucial for establishing theories of language that relate to the
psychological mechanisms involved in producing and comprehending speech, in
contrast to theories about abstract linguistic structure. A range of topics
is covered including morphological parsing, nominalization, stress,
syllable structure, diphthongization, gender, morphophonemic alternations,
and epenthesis. An appendix is included that serves as a primer on
quantitative linguistic research. It discusses how some of the cited
experiments were carried out, provides an introduction to statistical
analysis, and discusses tools that are available for conducting
quantitative research on the Spanish language.